When Rebecca Hogue @rjhogue writes in her blog “I did not leave the conference feeling that I was part of the community” (referring to the MOOC Research Initiative conference in Arlington Texas#mri13) she is not alone. And perhaps this feeling of isolation is not because of her position, experience, connections or degree; I think it is because the MOOC movement, especially the one circulating around the Twitter tribe, indirectly promotes isolation and disconnection. It takes a lot of time and patience to generate connections in Twitter. This platform is ruled by a dynamic of neoliberal and postmodern characteristics in which the vision of success is attached to the number of followers and not to the number of people the user follows. (I was thinking about this part in her post: “I wonder, did I miss that session, or was that session part of the private party that happened before the formal MOOC conference?”) This routine, in which performance and unidirectional communication are a predominant factor, cannot be a platform for academic discussion or even pedagogical production, especially for outsiders or people not familiar with these dynamics. Many of these superstars in Twitter virtually exist under these implied premises with cases in which the user has thousands of followers and at the same time the user is following no one. I do not blame them at all, since the format in Twitter aims towards self-glorification and superfluous communication. Twitter is the quintessential platform of this era of performance, lack of content and pseudo-inversion of power. MOOCs (and the MOOC movement) sometimes follow this dynamic, proving the idea that massive communication is not communication at all.

This type of interaction here took me to a further and perhaps radical position of, not only, not applying to the initiative, but also, not going to the conference. Who would want to go to a conference in which the idea of openness has a registration price of $500 (the $495 was a great touch) and was founded by the Gates Foundation (le coup de grace). I assume this price was prohibitive for many people around the globe. Openness for me is something else, completely outside of these dynamics and performances. Openness is active inclusion, lack of hierarchies, distrust of preconceptions (including colonial ideas like the euro-centralist model of academia), and, of course, multi-directional and horizontal communication. Who wants to go to a conference to hear keynote speakers?

MOOCs may be great as OER artifacts but from a practical pedagogical perspective, they are definitely not courses/classes. Classes are not (or should not be) simply unidirectional lectures or broadcastings. Classes require interaction and the development of ideas. Students construct the class; the teacher is just the guide and helper. The job of the teacher is to implement techniques that motivate the students and help these students attain a specific learning outcome. This is why the teacher-student ratio is very important. We know that the imparting of information does not imply learning. Consequently, libraries are not a replacement for classrooms; we know this because we have had libraries for thousands of years and they complement (but do not replace) classrooms extremely well. The idea that information provided on the internet would be somehow different, was, from its inception, flawed. I am arguing from this perspective, focusing on the availability of information on the net as one of the pillars of MOOCs. There are additional problems due to the lack of retention or even interaction among students enrolled in MOOCs: http://publications.cetis.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/MOOCs-and-Open-Education.pdf (p.11)

This is not an economic issue, or an argument designed to support teachers’ unions. This has to do with the quality of education. And when we talk about the quality of our resources when we speak of something we supposedly value as much as we do education and the educational system, the economic aspect should be irrelevant, or, at the very least, not the essential motivator.

Anyone who is a teacher (we need to recuperate the original value and meaning of this word because not all professors are teachers) would know that MOOCs are closer to social media than to a classroom. The problem is that many of the famous professors who are “teaching” the MOOCs, or even those who are designing these MOOCs, are not teachers. We all know that many professors in very prestigious universities are not teachers. Many are, but they are not the majority. Let us be honest here, academia discriminates against true teachers as second class citizens. Lecturers teach the classes, professors do research and make 4 or 5 times the salary of part-time faculty. Academia instills this idea in its graduate students from day one. Classes in pedagogy are, in general, presented as completely irrelevant. They are often taught by lecturers that many graduate students do not respect because these lecturers, although they may be experts in their field, do not have the power to impose an appropriate curriculum. No one wants to talk about this, but it is a reality. When those graduate students become professors, they spend their entire career doing research, and are often disconnected from the reality of the classroom. This leads them to design theories that do not work in practice. When these theories are combined with the powerful incentives of the economic marketplace and the promise of great financial gain, there is no turning back. Academia, if it remains disconnected from the practical reality of the classroom, will perpetually shoot itself in the foot.

I am definitely not against MOOCs. I think everyone should open their courses, share materials, teach in the wild and understand the OER paradigm. I just disagree with the opinion that MOOCs are or can replace courses. At least not the MOOCs I have seen and I have seen many. I think the problem is with the excessive polarity of this debate and the insistence (because of a clear financial agenda, in so many ways and players) that MOOCs are courses. Furthermore, we have here a typical academic agenda: “I want to be famous; I have this hypothesis that I will defend at any cost because my reputation is on the line”.

Many people are claiming that the institution of higher education is trembling. Really? I have heard this before from the people who wanted to make money in HE. I have been focusing on OERs since 2001, and I see MOOCs as a satellite of OERs rather than a substitute for any one thing.

In response to: @suifaijohnmak: Tell me more about this beginning of the instructional technology universe. Do you mean MOOCs or something more?

I definitely think that we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg in the area of instructional technology. MOOCs are solid and dynamic new paradigms; but in the near future, the possibilities in this area are so enormous that we cannot predict what this ocean of possibilities will be able to offer us. This area will become more accessible, and even more massive and affordable. This technology will not replace teachers but will enhance their performance. We will need more in depth theorization and research not only in the tools but specifically in the domain of instructional technology virtualization.

equipped with better authentication tools to offer personalized support and clear interaction

and then…

intelligent software: like automated agents you can interrelate with using NLP and AI

Furthermore, the improvements will come from the physical classroom technologies projecting the physical classroom into virtual space. Many of our classrooms are already equipped with HD cameras connected to the network and have friendly Wi-Fi interaction with multiple devices. All this technologies will become better and cheaper at an exponential rate.

Moreover, the real revolutionary explosion of new possibilities will arise when the instructors, not the theorists or developers, have the possibility of manipulating these technologies. We are getting there.